Although it is applicable to any arbitrary systems which include a control unit and at least one peripheral unit connected thereto using a line, the present invention is explained below in relation to an ignition system for gasoline engines in the field of motor vehicles, for example.
In current motor vehicle technology, systems are used in which peripheral units are connected via lines to a control unit. In this case, the corresponding peripheral units are usually spatially separated from the control unit, because of which special requirements are to be placed on the lines and the interfaces.
Some interfaces and/or bus systems for motor vehicle applications are conventional, such as the CAN bus system. These bus systems are not suitable for real-time systems, however, i.e., for immediate triggering of a procedure a few μs after receiving information, but rather solely for non-time-critical data exchange of spatially distributed systems.
Further systems have the disadvantage that they are not implemented as sufficiently fail-safe, in particular over long line distances.